


Blood Will Tell

by gisho



Series: Background Characters [4]
Category: Girl Genius
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Mid-Canon, Pre-Canon, Spark-minion relationships, experimental chocolates, generation euohrosynia generation bill generation agatha
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-11
Updated: 2018-10-11
Packaged: 2019-07-29 09:53:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16261790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gisho/pseuds/gisho
Summary: Wherin mimmoths have been causing problems for over two hundred years. (Written for GG Event Week 2018.)





	Blood Will Tell

\--

##### In the reign of Clemethious Heterodyne

"You really think the Heterodyne will be impressed by a _smaller_ mammoth?"

Mircea wasn't the most _respectful_ of minions. He kept asking _stupid questions_. But he worked hard and knew how to operate the coal shovel, so Doctor Radzivil kept him around. When she was in a good mood, she even answered his stupid questions. " _That's the point._ "

"Why?"

"So they can be _ridden._ " She can feel the edge of _burning inspiration_ trying to come to the surface, but it's getting dark. The mammoths are honking for their dinners and she really shouldn't pull two all-nighters in a row. "Controlled not by whole teams of soldiers, but _lone Jägers_! Mammoths that will _lead a charge! Faster! More maneuverable!_ " Radzivil waves a hand at the nearest pen, where her favorite bull, Primrose, is hopefully draping his trunk over the door for treats. Well, he's a good boy. She pulls a plum from her apron pocket, waves it so he can see, and then lobs it underhanded at the pen door. 

Primrose snatches it out of the air and it vanishes into his beautiful maw with a squelching noise. Such a good boy. So clever.

Her minion's eyes have gone a little wide, but he recovers in a second. "Some people might say they're plenty fast enough, mistress."

" _Those people are fools._ "

"Of course, mistress."

Damn sleep. Sleep can wait, she has a cow mammoth in heat, she has a chemical bath to adjust the growth of the seed. All she needs is Primrose's contribution, and she can start tonight. And they just got the model cow clean. "Get his _harness_ on! And then go _warm up the oyster essence!_ "

\--

Little Nasturtium is so small, when she's born, that Radzivil can pick up the calf in her arms without much effort. The shrinking chemicals worked. _They worked_. And it will be a year at least before they know her adult height, but this is so promising. This deserves a celebration. She sets Nasturtium back down, to make innocent lowing noises at Crocus, who despite just having given birth looks more curious than tired. Another advantage. " _Mircea! Send for the good wine!_ "

By the time one of the assorted fetch-and-carriers gets back with the wine - slack, very slack, she'll have to have them beaten - Nasturtium has been dried off, weighed, measured, had a good drink of milk, and is curled up fast asleep against her mother's side. Such a little thing, to change history.

Mircea takes the first sip, of course. Can't be too careful. He holds up his glass for a toast, since it's clean. "Congratulations, mistress."

"I will show them all." She'd said it often, but now there was an extra warm glow. Certainty. Triumph lay just ahead, when Nasturtium and her first pack of half-siblings were grown.

"Uh. And are you, er, going to show them all alone?" Mircea was grimacing.

"What? Don't be absurd. The Heterodyne is allied with me, remember? I can use his soldiers."

"Right."

"I'll write him and ask for some Jägers tomorrow." It was always better to raise up the beasts with their trainers. He was busy with that idiot Valois whelp, but surely there'd be some injured men in need of easy duties. "We can do amazing things with these beasts. They'll put a paragraph in every military history. _Then Ksenia Radzivil bred the first mammoth cavalry mounts, and the Coalition of the West fled in terror._ Isn't it nice being on the winning side?"

"I guess so." Mircea was staring into his wine, looking fretful. Really, he was a Mechanicsburger, you'd think he would be happy she was working with the Heterodyne. "It's a little strange to think about. That people will tell stories about you."

"Of course they will." Radzivil pats him on the shoulder. "We're building an empire here."

"Yes, mistress." He bites his lip. "A Heterodyne empire."

"My family have been allied with the Heterodyne for a hundred and thirty years. Venthraxus married one of us, and they lived a long and happy life and had a son, and now the Heterodynes have our blood in them. We help them." She smiles. "I'm the first of us to be born a wizard. That doesn't mean I can't fight for a Heterodyne empire. My grandfather always said, standing behind the throne gives you the best view."

That makes him smile. It looks out of place on his drooping, gloomy face. "They'll say the Heterodyne couldn't have done it without you - ack."

He was turning blue. That couldn't be good. "Mircea?"

"Slow-acting," he gasped out, and began to topple gently sideways. The wineglass slipped from his fingers and splattered a red puddle over the straw. Crocus looked up and whuffled in dismay.

Damn, damn, damn, she hated mixing antidotes. And this was such a good vintage, and she'd have to feed the rest to the kitchen staff and watch them choke on it. And get new kitchen staff. And just when the day had been going so nicely.

 

\--

##### In the reign of William Heterodyne

"He's never going to believe it. He's going to think someone sabotaged it on purpose."

"What? How would you even do that?"

"You put chocolate sauce in the engine. Mimmoths go nuts for chocolate, and it looks just like engine grease if nobody looks too closely." Ljuba looks martyred. "We are well and truly doomed." 

"Let's not panic," Zorka says, automatically, and then blinks a few times. "How do you know so much about mimmoths?"

"Because I was reading up! To try to defeat Professor Notswenok!" The words are almost a wail. "I thought that maybe we could do something to his engines and then he'd blow up and kill us but it would be okay because he couldn't keep digging then! And then the Heterodynes came and conquered him and we didn't have to and they're going _away_ again as soon as the slimes are buried except they _can't_ because there are _mimmoths in their airship engine what in the nine hells_ -"

She only stops because Zorka, by sisterly privilege, has clapped a hand over her mouth. Ljuba gets like this a lot. Zorka figures the flip side of being clever is that you notice all the things that could go wrong. She says, "So they'll fix it. They're Sparks."

"So why did they ask _us_ to oil it?"

"Because they wanted to work on the diggers, because the diggers are booby-trapped. Come on. We're perfectly competent minions. We'll clean out the nests, we'll put down mimmoth repellent, we'll find them replacement sparkplug wire, and maybe they'll let us live. Deep breaths."

"Deep breaths," Ljuba echoes, and obediently takes a few.

\--

For once - for the first time since the late unlamented Professor Notswenok drafted them as lab assistants - it looks worse than it is. It barely takes half an hour's work to get the nest out, and the mimmoth hair extracted from the pistons - they must have been shedding like mad to do this much damage in three days, but mimmoths are like that. Luckily the ignition wires are standard cordwrapped type, and they have a whole hundred-meter spool left. Zorka has to roll it down from the mechanical lab to the courtyard, that's all.

When she gets back Ljuba is sprinkling seed along the edge of the wall from the blue bottle. She looks up at Zorka with a wan smile. "Want some? It's supposed to be painless."

"Get that idea out of your head." Just in case Zorka bowls the wire reel at her, and takes the opportunity to grab the bottle while Ljuba's distracted trying to stop it with her foot. She shakes the blue bottle in the air. "We're going to live, you understand? _We're going to live._ "

"We're going to make a pair of Heterodynes mad." Ljuba looks for a second like she's going to say something more, but then she slumps against the wall, the picture of despair and dejection. 

There has to be something she could say that isn't an obvious lie. After a moment she throws out, "They didn't kill anyone but Professor Notswenok. And he was trying to drown them in goo."

"Why did they even show up?" Her hands are pressed to her face and Ljuba's voice is muffled. "Is there going to be another Heterodyne empire? I wouldn't have thought we were in the way."

"I don't know." Zorka sets the blue bottle down before she wraps her arms around her sister. "Look, maybe it's going to work out this time. They seemed nice."

"Nice." 

"Really." Zorka can feel herself warming to her subject now. "They did a good thing getting rid of the Professor, even if they're going to take over now. But they didn't bring the Jägermonsters."

"Yet. They didn't bring the Jägermonsters yet." Ljuba lowers her hands and gives a long-suffering sigh. "What story are you telling yourself this time?"

"The one where it's going to be okay," Zorka says, and hopes her voice doesn't shake too much. "The one where there's been a miracle and the Heterodynes weren't just playing some sick game when they said they wanted to redeem the family name. Where they come and kill madboys and blow up their horrible monsters and then _go away again_. That one. I don't know. Maybe blood doesn't always tell."

"Why would it stop now? Maybe they're just luring us into complacency."

"That's just it, though. Why would they need too?" 

Ljuba shoves her away; she always does when she's gotten ahold of herself, like she can't stand the insult of an embrace. "Just because we're not smart enough to think of it doesn't mean they don't have a reason. Come on, let's at least get the windings laid out. Then we can hide."

It would be pointless to carry on with the argument. Zorka sighs theatrically, and goes to fetch the wire reel from where it's fallen against the Automatic Goat-Shearer. She doesn't say, _They didn't blow us up right away, so let's give them the benefit of the doubt,_ because that's a stupid thing to say about Heterodynes. About anyone. Zorka's not the smart one but she's not that stupid.

But she can't help but think, _They're only boys_.

\--

##### In the reign of Agatha Heterodyne

"The deluxe assortment? Madame has exquisite taste!" Giselle gave a little mock-gasp, and clutched her hands in front of her heaving bosoms, and fluttered her eyelashes.

Somehow, miraculously, Nadine doesn't burst into laughter. Instead she leans in a little closer, her piractical blue feather waggling in her hat. "I am taking a _lovely_ young lady to the opera," she breathes. "I intend that the evening will be ... memorable."

"Memorable?" Giselle manages to tug her neckline a little lower, disguising it as brushing something off her apron. "I'm sure madame's company alone would suffice for that."

"Oh, but chocolate is necessary as well, don't you think?" Nadine leans in a little closer, and her breath is warm on Giselle's ear as she hoarsely whispers, "It's an aphrodisiac."

That does it. Not the words, but the _tone_. Giselle collapses into stifled laughter, stuffing a fist into her mouth as she squeaks. "Na _dine_! Was that necessary?"

"Well, why else are you selling them?" The flirtation is gone, Nadine is rocking back on her heels with her arms crossed, but the grin is just as bright. "I really am taking you to the opera, though. I got tickets off Georgi. _Agata della Heterodynes_ , at eight. Am I getting a discount box too? What have you inflicted on poor innocent mimmoths this week?"

"As if dipping them in chocolate isn't enough?" But she relents, a little, at the hangdog pout on Nadine's face. "Apple butter, Danish sea salt, and green chiles. I thought the sea salt came out well -"

"But everyone else thought the meat was enough contrast of flavours?"

"Exactly." Giselle sighs. It's hard being a properly _experimental_ chocolatier and keeping customers. Her boss has banned acids stronger than balsamic vinegar after that unfortunate incident with the marzipan etching, and keeps going on about reputation and history whenever Giselle points out they'd get student customers if they made 'be our test subject' into a proper marketing campaign. "You know the fifty-percent-with-buttercream's been our best seller for seven weeks straight? Parisians have no sense of adventure. How was Monaco?"

"Distinctly lacking in gorgeous girlfriend." Nadine makes a face.

"That bad?"

"Let's talk about the opera." Her gorgeous girlfriend does a desperate grin. Good thing it's the slow part of the afternoon; Giselle can just lean up against the truffle case and melt a little and no one will mind. "I hear they have a _guest star_ playing the Young Baron. Actual Romanian."

"Like that makes it more authentic." Giselle can't help but roll her eyes. "Nobody goes to the opera for the storytelling."

"Certainly not us."

"We go for the special effects."

They exchange one of those little half-smiles, the kind that had convinced Giselle, six months ago, that Nadine was worth sleeping alone three nights a week; it only made the anticipation sweeter. Nadine goes on, "But really, you can't write a good opera about something you're still in the middle of. I expect they're just going to pretend the Siege of Mechanicsburg ended when young Wulfenbach snuck into the city to beg for her hand in marriage and offer his father's abdication, or some such twaddle."

Giselle presses a finger to her lips as she contemplates this. "I doubt it," she says.

"Oh?"

"I expect they'll drop a gauze curtain and roll out a big sign that says To Be Continued. And then we'll all have to buy tickets to the sequel."

Nadine plucks a wrapped Lavender Mimmoth off the counter and holds it up, dangling, by the ribbon, as if she were exami it for defects. "You have a remarkably mercenary mind, cherié."

"Comes of being a small businesswoman."

"No you're not. You are an employee and you are wasted on these philistines. Run away with me? We could be dashing pirates."

"Pirate ships don't have a big enough kitchen." Giselle sighs tucks a stray lock of hair behind her ear. "You'll just have to bring me the booty to open my own shop."

"Or buy out Planchard. Why mess with an established customer base?"

"Everyone knows Planchard's does classy rich chocolate. Need my own reputation," She waves her hands in the air. Nadine may be a perfectly respectable mercantile pilot, but it's always fun to fantasize. "You think Lady Agatha would turn up and call herself the Heterodyne Girl?"

"I don't know. As long as she doesn't call herself Destroyer of Paris." It's Nadine's turn now to stare into the middle distance, fingers on her lips. "Idea for the sequel," she says. "She comes to Paris for help freeing her town, and one of the Master's daughters agrees to help her. Will her love for Baron Wulfenbach survive as they work together, hand in hand?"

"That's not opera, that's a penny sparkly." Giselle can't help but smirk. "Which daughter?"

"Mm. I think there's one at the Academy now? She'd be the right age."

"There is. There are rumours about her. I like it."

"It'd never happen. You know how boy-meets-girl the librettists get."

"I know," Giselle says, and gives her gorgeous girlfriend a flick on the ear. It's not as if they'll ever meet the Lady Heterodyne; they can fantasize all they want. Unlikely dynastic marriages included. But as long as there's a Heterodyne who's not inclined to conquest and slaughter, they may as well take advantage. "They just have no imagination."

\--

**Author's Note:**

> History geek note: 'Radzivil' is a variant of the family name best known to history as 'Radziwiłł'; in the alternate history I'm positing here Barbara decided to go for something a little more impressive than Queen of Poland. She historically had a brother called "the Red" and a cousin called "the Black", so I couldn't resist.


End file.
